Just before our plane touched down on St. Thomas, I came across this fun fact in a local guidebook: More than a million cruise-ship passengers invade the island each year.A million. And as our cab inched through the capital city of Charlotte Amalie, there, apparently, they all were - booty-crazed pirates plundering the duty-free shopping district of discount rum, china and jewelry. Horns honked. People fought for parking spaces. I saw the wild eyes of consumers in the thrall of consumption.

A 4.5 magnitude earthquake struck offshore of Puerto Rico at about 11:05 p.m. EST Tuesday. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said the temblor was located about 30 miles north of Culebra, Puerto Rico, and about 32 miles northwest of Charlotte Amalie in the U.S. Virgin Islands. There were no initial reports of damages in the area. The area where the quake struck is known for a variety of tectonic aspects, including four major geologic plates. The specific geologic region where the quake was recorded is known as the Sombrero Seismic Zone.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- After a decade of complaints about water quality off the coast of St. Thomas, workers were repairing the island's main sewage plant Tuesday to ensure it didn't release sewage into the Caribbean, officials said. The Airport Lagoon plant, west of Charlotte Amalie, has not met U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines since the early 1990s.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- An Ohio man was shot to death in his hotel room during an apparent robbery attempt, police said Friday. Shannon Blair, 45, of West Chester, Ohio, was shot in the abdomen while staying in St. Thomas on Thursday night, said Sgt. Thomas Hannah, a police spokesman.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- A Dominican man was found stabbed to death in a mortuary parking lot, police said Monday. The man was found Sunday outside the John Thomas Memorial Chapel. The death is the fourth apparent homicide this year in the U.S. Caribbean territory of 108,000 residents, police said.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- Police found the body of an infant girl near a beach where illegal immigrants were thought to have landed in this U.S. territory, authorities said Wednesday. She appeared to have drowned, said Sgt. Thomas Hannah, St. Thomas police spokesman.

Linda Carol Roberts and Keith Hayes Warner were married May 7 in Lutheran Frederick Church, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William C. Roberts, Leesburg. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Warner, Melksham, England. They planned to travel to the Caribbean and to live in St. Thomas.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- A grand jury indicted two men on charges of attempting to smuggle about 55 pounds of cocaine on a flight from St. Thomas to North Carolina. Shawn Callwood, 20, and Stacy Earl Jr., 30, both of Charlotte, N.C., were stopped by U.S. Customs Service agents March 8 before boarding an American Airlines flight. Callwood was released on $10,000 bail, and Earl remains in custody, according to court papers.

Twenty-eight young prostitutes were found dead in a shipping container unloaded from a ship in Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the newspaper Le Matin reported Saturday. Their mouths were open ''as if they had appealed for air before perishing,'' the story said. Thirty-two women were found alive in other containers, according to Le Matin. Eugene Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Virgin Islands Port Authority in Charlotte Amalie: ''I know nothing at all about that.

Arguably the Caribbean's most popular cruise ship port--visitors can count nine or 10 ships in port on any given day--St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands is often dubbed "the shopping center of the Caribbean." Its capital city, Charlotte Amalie, certainly lives up to the moniker, offering hundreds of shops along the waterfront housed in red-roofed buildings which were formerly Danish warehouses. The U.S. acquired St. Thomas and the other U.S. Virgin Islands of St. John and St. Croix from Denmark in 1917.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- A Canadian man who founded a company that processes Internet gambling transactions was led into a U.S. Virgin Islands court in ankle chains to face money-laundering charges on Wednesday. Stephen Eric Lawrence, 46, was accused of funneling billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds to overseas betting operations. The former Neteller PLC director was arrested on the island of St. John on Monday on a warrant from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, FBI Special Agent Donald A. Neily said.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- Legislators in the U.S. Virgin Islands granted themselves and the governor a large pay raise as their final act of the year while voting to double the Caribbean territory's long-term debt to help close a pension deficit. The 15-member Senate voted 7-6, with two members absent, to raise the salaries and issue $600 million in bonds to cover part of a projected deficit in the Government Employee Retirement System. The governor's salary would increase from $80,000 to $150,000.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- Activists seeking reparations from Denmark for its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade are holding a two-day meeting to build consensus on their demands. Many Virgin Islands activists say their primary goal is to educate former slave-trading nations and encourage local investment, but they have not ruled out a request for cash payments. Denmark's consul general to the U.S. Virgin Islands, a former Danish colony, offered this week to discuss the country's "position on slavery and racial discrimination," said Shelley Moorhead, head of the African Caribbean Reparations and Reconciliation Alliance.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- A man is suspected of gunning down his parents, younger brother and their dog in the family's home in St. Croix, police said Wednesday. Investigators allege Ivan Petric fatally shot his 75-year-old father, 69-year-old mother and 31-year-old brother with a small-caliber gun, but he has not been charged in the killings, a police spokeswoman said. Petric, 32, was charged Tuesday with illegal possession of a gun.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- A former housing-authority official in the U.S. Virgin Islands was convicted of fraud for his role in a scheme to award a contractor repair jobs in exchange for thousands of dollars, an official said Thursday. Walter John Jr. -- the fourth man convicted this month of defrauding the U.S. Caribbean territory -- took $37,000 from a contractor in exchange for federally funded contracts to repair public-housing units in the island of St. Croix, U.S. Attorney Anthony J. Jenkins said.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- Millions of Americans living in U.S. territories have been unjustly barred from voting for president and from voting representation in Congress, a Virgin Islands activist argued in federal court Monday. Krim Ballentine said the rule blocking American citizens from voting in federal elections, if they legally reside in a U.S. territory, is unconstitutional. Ballentine filed the federal lawsuit in 1999.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands - U.S. Virgin Islands police have arrested a man on charges that he robbed two tourists by threatening them with a machete. Police arrested Claudian Jean, 39, of St. Croix on robbery charges Tuesday shortly after the two tourists reported that a man wielding a machete stole $175 from them and fled on foot.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- The British Virgin Islands has signed a multimillion-dollar contract to build a wastewater-treatment plant in Tortola, officials said Wednesday. Global Water Associates, which signed the $2.68 million contract, will begin construction in November, said Joe Daily, a government spokesman. The plant will be able to treat 250,000 gallons of wastewater per day. It will be the first such facility on the eastern end of Tortola.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- Nineteen Cubans seeking political asylum surrendered to U.S. federal agents in St. Thomas after they arrived early Friday by boat in the U.S. Caribbean territory, authorities said. The migrants -- 10 men, nine women -- were in good health and will be transferred to a detention center in neighboring Puerto Rico, said Ivan Ortiz, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.